ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the European Union's (EU) involvement in international investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal debates on the EU's legal competences in international investment policy since the 1950s. It clarifies how the EU's evolving de facto competences in international investment negotiations with third countries affected the decision to extend the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulation in the Lisbon Treaty. The book shows that the European Commission acted as a resourceful and persistent policy entrepreneur to extend the Union's de facto and legal competence under the CCP to the regulation of international investment despite Member State hesitation. National technocrats still vehemently opposed the CCP extension but failed to convince their political leaderships to spend political capital on deletion of the 'FDI' reference from the CCP articles.
